Fieldwork expeditions of the Archaeological Research Unit, University of Cyprus were initiated in 2006 at the site of Marcello, close to the area where the British Mission and the Swiss-German Mission uncovered a monumental fortification wall with a dog-leg gate, and a huge bothros abutting the wall to the north. Plots 147 and 110 became the first targets of the University of Cyprus team. These two parcels had been left out of Protection Zone B of the Department of Antiquities.

The 2006 was an exploratory season, with a small excavation team. The first concern of the excavation project became the stumps of wall left on either side of the monumental façade of the Marcello monument. The south-east arm can hardly be followed further east since it encounters the precipitous drop that defines the plateau on that side.

The team excavated at ten different trenches, designated as M1-M10, situated to the North and the Northwest of the Marcello monument . The 2006 excavations revealed part of the northwest arm of the Marcello defensive system, which consists of a thick wall, around 3.40m. wide, running some 50 m. in length that was partially exposed. The rampart is made of solid stonework, and includes some large-scale blocks of ashlar masonry. Preliminary investigation at Marcello suggests that the purpose of the defensive wall at Marcello was to protect not a city, but an administrative citadel situated on the plateau. Its purpose was to provide added strength and protection to a natural acropolis.

The monumental rampart of Marcello appears to have destroyed a series of tombs of the Late Bronze Age, as is suggested by the ceramic material. A high percentage of sherds of Base Ring, White Slip and other painted wares of the Late Bronze Age were found mixed with Iron Age material in the layers of the construction phase of the rampart. During the 2006 excavations at the site, three complete White Painted Wheelmade III vessels (a thelastron, a bowl and a cup) and a golden pomegranate-shape bead were found between stones of the wall. They belong to a destroyed chamber tomb.

Judging by the ceramic material, the earliest archaeologically attested use of the Marcello ground dates to the Late Bronze Age period. The hundreds of easily identifiable White Slip and Base-ring sherds, and also many Plain wares of Late Cypriot II and III date were found in great numbers mixed with the Iron Age material in every trench excavated. The second chronological horizon seems to start at the end of the Geometric period, picks in the Late Archaic and Early Classical. There is hardly anything that could diagnose use of the plateau after the 3rd century BC.